by Mo Hayder
“Fuck,” she muttered after a while, deflated. The Jaguar reversed up the drive and she stood, watching the flock of crows bank away against the blue sky. When they had disappeared behind the trees she turned and limped back to the house.
Afterward she sat on the doorstep, staring out at the hangar, at the rusting old engines, and the old Land Rover roofs tangled in woodbine. She had almost forgotten she was holding a cigarette. It was only when it burned her fingers that she dropped it. She scowled, leaned over, pulling her hair back from her face, and let a globe of granular phlegm drop directly on top of the burning butt. She was scuffing the phlegm with her shoe, so she didn't slide on it in the morning, when she heard wheels on the gravel. She looked up, suddenly nervous.
“Oh, fuck.” She got to her feet, wheezing, sliding the locks on the door and hurrying back inside the house. Maybe he meant it—maybe here come the mates—she had got halfway down the corridor when she heard the voice ahead of her.
“Tracey!”
That made her stop—just by the kitchen door, her heart knocking against her throat. She swallowed. Rested her bitten nails on the doorpost and leaned cautiously back into the hallway. He was standing motionless in the sunlit front doorway, his hands in his pockets, his face tight. A wasp had got into the house and was banging itself on the ceiling. “What?” she called. “What do you want?”
“Three grand.”
“What?”
“I said three grand—I'll give you three.”
Roland Klare could have told the police that they needed to be looking for someone more than just Alek Peach. Oh, yes, he could tell them that in one sentence. He knelt on the sofa, his nose and hands pressed against the window, one knee jerking up and down nervously, and stared out at the lovely trees and dried-up lawns of Brockwell Park. The photographs hanging in a row in his darkroom clearly showed Alek Peach doing the unthinkable to his son. But the same images made something else quite clear: they made it clear that Alek Peach hadn't been the only person in the house at the time. They made it clear that someone else had been involved—the someone who was holding the camera.
Klare made a little clicking noise in his mouth and tapped at the window, wondering what to do next. “Hmmm, yes,” he muttered. “Hmm.” He pushed himself away from the glass and turned back to the big, well-lit living room, rubbing his hands nervously.
25
CAFFERY GOT BACK TO SHRIVEMOOR just after 6 P.M. and as he parked he saw Kryotos, dressed in a cream jacket, climbing into her husband's car. He crossed the road. “Anything happened?” he asked, both hands on the roof, looking up the road to check that no cars were coming in this lane. “Logan back?”
“Been and gone, photocopied some Actions and left them in your pigeonhole—nothing doing.”
“Shit.” He bent down, looked into the car and nodded at Kryotos's husband. “Pardon my language.”
“No problem.”
“There're some messages for you,” Kryotos said, putting on her seat belt and eyeing Caffery cautiously. He had that run-ragged look about his eyes again. “That dentist, he called, wants to talk to you, and someone called Gummer, oh and West End Central have found Champ Keo-dua—whatsit for you, if you still want to see him.”
“Peach?”
“No change.” She nodded up at the incident room windows, where the sunlight bounced off the silver antiblast film. “Danni's still up there.”
“Shit.”
“I know. She's not in the best mood.”
“OK.” He straightened up and knocked on the car roof. “Right, thanks, Marilyn. See you tomorrow.”
The incident room was empty and Danni was in the SIOs' room filling in her duty sheets for the month. Next to her was an open bottle of Glenfiddich—an oiler courtesy of a Sunday tabloid journalist doing an article on geographical profiling.
“Danni?”
She looked up. “Oh,” she muttered. “You.” She went back to her work.
He stood awkwardly in the doorway, watching her, not certain whether to leave or stay. When she seemed determined not to speak to him he sat down at his desk, hands folded on his stomach, and stared out the window in silence. Before long Souness caved in.
“Right.” She signed off the form, threw her pen on the desk and sat back in her chair. “Spit it out.”
“OK …” He put his hands flat on the desk and looked out the window for a moment, thinking how to approach this. “I—” He turned to her. “Look—about this morning.”
“Yes?”
“I'm sorry.”
She pursed her mouth, looking at him suspiciously with her narrow, blue eyes.
“It was out of all proportion,” he continued. “I'm finding this case, y'know, not great, for the reasons you know all about—and I suppose I haven't been sleeping.” He shrugged. “Just means I'm sorry.”
Her mouth remained in its sour little bud knot. “I see.” She picked up the pen and tapped it on the desk, upending it, tapping, staring at the desk. She seemed about to say something, then changed her mind and rubbed her head. She stretched her arms in the air and looked out the window. “Oh, fuck,” she muttered. “I suppose I'll have to forgive ye.”
“Oh,” he sighed, “well, thanks. You know, thanks for the buildup.”
“That's OK.” She put her finger in her ear and jiggled it ferociously, looking sideways at him. “ ‘I don't think I could get my head that far up my own arse. ’ Could ye not have come up wi' something a wee bit better than that?”
“Next time, I'll try.”
“You do that,” she said, swiveling her chair round to face him, her hands clasped on her stomach. “Anyway— have ye seen this?” She shook her belly up and down. “See that? I'm losing weight.” She looked up at him, her face serious. “And didn't you say something about owing me dinner?”
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did—if you were wrong about Gordon Wardell being all over the newspapers, you'd buy me dinner.”
“Was I wrong?”
“Doesn't matter. I'm your boss.”
“I was right, then.”
“Maybe.”
“In the end I had to forgive ye, Jack, I've got no transport today—Paulina took the Beemer.” They didn't discuss where to go. They just got into the Jaguar and drove to Brixton as if it was the most natural place on earth, as if they were being drawn by the imprisoned river Effra along its route. On its fringes, where the mystifying eye-dust of nightclub and art house hadn't permeated, Brixton was still dangerous and lonely. Here, shriveled men in mudstained tracksuits and straw hats, tinsel flowers on the brims, rolled their eyes at the stars and the lampposts and mouthed madness to the moon. Here streetlights had been taken out by BB guns from the estates, and the only illumination was cold cubes of ultraviolet in the shops, installed to stop addicts cranking up in the doorways by making their own arm veins invisible. In central Brixton the real nightlife hadn't woken up yet—it was too early: the Bug bar, the Fridge, Mass, were all silent. It wouldn't be until midnight that central Brixton turned into little Ibiza—traffic jams at midnight and Balearic beat bunnies standing up through car sunroofs waving at the world. Still, as they parked and walked toward Coldharbour Lane, Caffery was glad of the comparative light and warmth.
He stopped at a cashpoint: “Just for forty quid or so.”
“I'd get more than that if I were you. I'm nae a cheap date, y'know.” Souness stood with her hands in her pockets, her back to him, trying to outstare the beggar with a baby who sat under the cashpoint. Caffery checked his balance. That figure he'd given Tracey Lamb hadn't come out of nowhere—he'd had good reason: he knew how far the bank would extend his overdraft at short notice. Three thousand pounds. What could three grand buy you? No matter how many times he reminded himself—she's a liar, she's a washed-up old con—his hopeful heart, his pathetically hopeful heart, kept up the pestering: what if what if what if …
“Right.” He pocketed the money, checked around to make sure no one was watchi
ng and nodded toward Coldharbour Lane. “Dinner, then?”
The Windrush population, who had once laid claim to these few streets, had largely been pushed out of central Brixton and into the narrow capillaries around it. There were few true black pubs left—few places one could walk into on a Saturday afternoon and see young men playing dominoes, screaming, slapping their thighs, flipping open their mobiles to relay twists in the game to absent friends. Most of Coldharbour Lane catered to the new population, and Caffery and Souness chose a place near the square, the Satay Bar, with its mirrors and bird-of-paradise flowers in towering glass vases. They ordered Malay kebabs, rice cubes and two Singha beers, and sat at a tiny table next to the window. Souness sat comfortably, her jacket unbuttoned, her pager resting on the table between them.
“I like it here.” She leaned forward a little and peered out the window. “This road is so fucking trendy that if you sit still long enough, in your wee cave, once in a while a bit of A-list totty breaks cover. Saw Caprice out there once, I'm sure it was her, wearing these …” she sucked breath in through closed teeth and chopped her hands at the tops of her thighs “… these red shorts, right up to here, and who's that one with the big tits? She gets fat like me now and then. You know. Big mouth.”
“Dunno.”
Souness smiled wryly and picked up a kebab. “First sign of depression, that.”
“What?”
“Losing interest in sex.”
“I haven't lost interest in sex.”
“Oh, aye,” she pointed at him with the kebab, “the day you die'll be the day you lose interest in sex, Jack Caffery.”
“I'm just …” He unrolled his knife and fork and pulled his plate toward him. He looked at the food for a minute, then leaned forward, elbows on either side of the plate. “You've been in the force, Danni, what? Fifteen, sixteen years?”
“And the rest—I know I've the face of a wee angel, but my thirty's only nine years away.”
“So—remember back to when you joined. Do you remember what was in your head?”
“Oh, aye. I was excited. Came straight out—the moment I got into Hendon I came out. But,” she said, emphasizing the word with a little jab of the kebab, “I never used it, Jack. Even when the world changed and I could've used it, I never did.” She put the food in her mouth, chewed. “Of course, that doesn't mean I never kissed a little ass. No. Nor kissed a little pussy neither.”
“And you still love it?”
“Kissing pussy?”
He smiled. “The force.”
“Aye. I still love it. Every minute of it.”
“And you never feel you got in for the wrong reason?”
“No.” She forked rice cubes into her mouth and looked around the restaurant, chewing hard, focusing her eyes on a point somewhere above his head. “But, then, nothing happened to me like what happened to you when you were a wain.”
At that Caffery cleared his throat and sat back a little, looking down at his food. He knew Souness was waiting for him to pick up the baton. Suddenly he wasn't very hungry. “You know, don't you …” he looked up at her “… you know I only joined the force because I had some fucked-up idea I was going to find Ew—” He paused.
“Find my brother.”
“Aye, it doesn't take a genius to see that.”
He sat forward. “But, Danni, I can't disentangle it. I get a case like Rory Peach and suddenly I'm ten years old again, fists up and wanting to take them all on—want to bare-knuckle fight.”
“So ye get angry from time to time. What of it?”
“What of it?” He pulled out his tobacco and quickly rolled a cigarette. “What of it? Well,” he said, holding a lighter to the cigarette, “well, one day it's going to go too far, I can see it. One day someone's going to push me and I'll do something I can't go back on.” He dragged on the cigarette and held the smoke in his lungs, head back, eyes closed. Then he let out the smoke and rested the cigarette in the ashtray. “It's all about perspective—that's what they'd call it, isn't it, perspective? Look at what I did at the hospital—look at the way I laid into you, trying to batter it into you that there's someone—”
“Ah, wait,” Souness said. “I know what you're going to say.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” She dipped the meat in peanut sauce and ripped a piece off the skewer with her teeth. “Aye, and I've been thinking about it too. You think there's still someone out there? Another family.”
“Yes. I told you, I'm a dog with a bone.”
“ 'S OK, Jack,” she said, chewing hard. “I've spoken to the gov about it—I can give you two of the outside team. Do whatever you want with them—just bring them back with a smile on their faces. OK?”
He stared at her. “You're feeding me.”
“No. No, I'm not. I think ye might just have a point. Now instead of sitting there with your mouth open like an eejit, say thank you.”
He shook his head. “OK.” He nodded. “OK—thanks, Danni—thanks.”
“It's nothing. Now, put that out,” she jabbed the skewer at his cigarette, “and just get on with your food. You look like a proper meal would kill you at the moment.”
He stubbed out the cigarette, and he pulled his plate toward him. But still he couldn't concentrate on the food. “What went on in that house, Danni?” he said after a while. “What the fuck went on in there?”
She used a fork to push the rest of the meat off the skewer into the sauce. “It's simple. Rory Peach got raped. By his father. It happens, you know.”
“Then what was going on in that family?”
“I don't know.” She forked some beef into her mouth and chewed. “I often wonder what it'd be like to rape. It's one of those things women wonder about—not to be raped, but to be the one who rapes. Not very PC for an old dyke, is it?” She took a swig of Singha and wiped her mouth. “I had a conversation once with this rapist, and you know what he said? He said—and I can remember every word, because it was then that I knew that whatever I did, however much I strapped my chest down and cut my hair, I'd never really understand what it feels like to be a guy—he said”—she sat forward and looked Jack in the eye—“he said: ‘It's like your heart is sticking out, it's like you're biting down so hard on leather that your jaw cracks, it's like the hard-on to end all hard-ons, it's like having your soul dragged out through your dick. ’ ” Souness sat back, stabbing her fork into the meat. “Pretty loony tunes, eh?” She stopped. Caffery had stood up. “Hey, where ye going?”
“Do you want another drink?”
“Yeah.” She was bewildered. “Yeah, go on then, another beer.” She put the food into her mouth and chewed slowly as she watched him go to the bar, wondering what she'd said. Something was definitely a bit tangled in Caf-fery—there was no doubt about it. Sometimes he had the eyes of a lion on a lead. When he got back with the drinks he was quiet.
“Jack—what is it? Come on, talk to me.”
“I think I'll call Rebecca.”
“Aye. Rebecca. How is she?”
“She's fine.”
“Good. Well, send her my love, then.” She leaned over and took his plate. “You're not wanting this are ye?”
“No—go ahead.”
She scraped what he hadn't eaten onto her plate and started to fork her way through it. The meal finished early and Caffery didn't need the extra money he'd got from the cashpoint.
On the phone Rebecca's voice was indistinct. “Jack— where am I—I mean, God,” she took a breath. “I'm sorry, I mean, where are you?”
“Are you all right?”
“I'm—I dunno—drunk, I think. I think I'm lost, Jack.”
“Where are you?”
“At the—y'know, at the gallery.”
“The same one I got you from before?”
“I think so.”
“I'm only over the road. Wait for me.”
The Satay Bar was only a hundred yards from the Air Gallery. He crossed the street and went inside, his tired eye
s smarting in the smoke as he wove through the bar, past hanging aluminum panels, cast resin columns, tungsten pinpricks of light, not meeting the cool, otherworldly gazes of all the modern faces in the semidarkness. When he eventually found Rebecca, on the first floor, he stood for a moment and stared, as if he was seeing into another world.
A fully lit glass cabinet displayed models of pathology specimens in colored fluid. In front of it, on matching chairs, sat four girls with pale East European faces and geometric haircuts. They wore intent expressions and were leaning forward listening to the man who sat on the red plastic sofa opposite them. He was tall and strickenlooking in a black polo neck, and Caffery recognized him as a journalist from a late-night Channel 4 show.
“Like Michelangelo's blocked windows in the Medici library, these are vaginas that go nowhere,” he was saying, biting with precision on the ends of his words. “They invert the natural order of a phallocentric society; they create the organic, the organ like, where a male-obsessed perspective thinks there should be a space. They are saying, “Look! Look at the tribalness, look at the vagina-ness—do not ignore it!”
Rebecca sat next to him as he talked about her work. She was folded into the crease of the sofa, dressed in a T-shirt and a dragonfly-blue skirt. Her chin was down on her chest, her hands were loosely wrapped around an open bottle of absinthe resting on her bare knees and, although no one seemed to have noticed, she was fast asleep.
“Becky.” Caffery put himself between the small audience and the sofa and held a hand out to her. “C'mon, Becky.”
The journalist stopped talking and turned to look at him: “Yes?” He pressed a hand on his chest and lowered his chin. “Did you want to ask something?”
Caffery bent down to see Rebecca's face. “Rebecca?” She didn't stir. She'd had her hair cut since he'd last seen her. It stood in wild tufts around her little smudged face. Two clumps of black eyeliner had collected in the corners of her eyes and she looked like nothing so much as a casualty at a teenagers' drinking party. A little drunken pixie. “Becky—come on.” He took her hand, peeling the fingers from the bottle, and she stirred a little.